Thursday Morning Intensives - 9:00am-12:30pm, April 6th (choose one):

Positive leaders build resilient organizations by creating environments where people thrive. They understand that employee well-being is enhanced when individuals experience positive emotions and a sense of purpose at work. In this workshop, Dr. Beth Cabrera and Dr. Steve Gladis will share proven strategies that leaders can use to foster a positive work environment, resulting in a more engaged, productive, and resilient workforce.

Do you want to guarantee the unsustainability of any organization? Tie its future to one pole of a polarity. If you want to build resilience into you organization, identify a few key polarities and leverage them well. Polarities (AKA Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Tensions, Wicked Problems) have a set of characteristics that relate directly to resilience:

Both poles of the polarity are interdependent. Focusing on one pole to the neglect of the other is inherently unsustainable. Making the false choice between Centralizing OR Decentralizing is like making the choice between Inhaling and Exhaling. Neither, alone, is sustainable over time = no resilience.

Polarities are indestructible and unstoppable energy systems in which we live and work. We live in them and they live in us. As long as an organization exists, this energy is available to leverage. Because of their indestructibility, tying an organization’s future to a few key polarities is a great way to support the organization’s resilience. For example, effectively leveraging the tension between Centralization AND Decentralization will enhance an organization’s competitiveness and increase its resilience.

During the session, we will look at the Well Being of Organizations AND the Well Being of its Employees. There will be a 10 minute pre-conference assessment that all participants in the workshop will take online. The assessment will look at your individual responsibility for leveraging the Work AND Home polarity and we will look at your organization’s responsibility for leveraging the Work AND Home polarity. You will leave knowing the results and with concrete ideas about how to leverage both.

Today’s workplace is characteristically frenetic and uncertain, so much so that there is even a well-know acronym to describe it – VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.) How is it possible for leaders to thrive in such circumstances? What does it take to call forth our own best thinking day-in and day-out, let alone to call forth the best efforts of those we lead?

In this interactive and highly practical session, we will share what it means to be a Resilient Leader – one who can face these challenging times with an increased measure of calm, clarity and conviction. We’ll explore together how to develop this capacity in your self and in those you lead, and examine how resilient leaders build more resilient organizations.

During the session you will have the opportunity to take a Resilient Leadership Self Assessment and utilize an organizational survey to evaluate your own organization’s current level of Resilience. You will leave with new practices you can master and share with others, and a renewed sense of optimism about your capacity to build a more resilient self, a more resilient team, and a more resilient organization.

Option B: Bob Anderson with The Leadership Circle: The Journey of Conscious Leadership

Bob Anderson

Leadership is spiritual boot camp. It is boot camp because it is hard and requires a level of self-honesty that is vulnerable. It is spiritual because it demands the highest and best in us. In this session, we will explore the developmental journey into a form of leadership that is, at once, creative, generative, agile, resilient, systemic, and of service—the kind of leadership that, as it develops, progressively translates into individual and corporate well-being. In this session, we will explore:

The relationship between organizational/business performance and the effectiveness of leadership

A Universal Model for the life-long development of leadership

Three leadership mindsets that develop progressively (if development proceeds), each of which ushers in greater capacity to meet complexity.

How each mindset is designed for different levels of performance.

The Hero/Heroines’ Journey—the mythic expression of how great leadership is forged.

Three practices that reliably shift one’s leadership from Reactive to Creative.

This session will be grounded in both research and practical experience. More importantly, it will be interactive, experiential, fun, and powerful.